Fraternity Trashes Airbnb Home In Westminster

WESTMINSTER (CBSLA) — A local man thought he was renting his house to tourists, instead he says local fraternity brothers showed up, hazed the pledges and trashed his home.

When Thaun Nguyen rented his Westminster home on Airbnb for the first time last month, he says he made it clear that security cameras were recording in the front of the house, the living room and the garage.

The weekend of Jan. 26 he says he thought he was renting to a family.

A man who claimed to be from El Monte wrote that his cousins were visiting from Colorado and wanted his home because it’s close to Disneyland.

But Nguyen says it wasn’t a family at all, but a group of at least 50 college-aged kids he says blew holes in his walls, ripped out the wire to his living room security camera, destroyed his wood blinds and left a long crack in his new tile floors.

“I thought why? Why people did that,” said Nguyen.

But the worst part, he says, was what happened in his garage.

“I want to make sure these things don’t happen to anyone again,” said Nguyen.

He says his security camera captured what he describes as a Cal State University Long Beach fraternity hazing.

Just before the alleged incident, you can see someone take notice of the camera. Minutes later young men line up and chug an unknown substance. Then they move against the wall, while one yells at them. Nguyen says you can see them as they crouch down, duck their heads, then get up and chug again. Nguyen says he became worried when he saw one young man begin to vomit, then struggle to walk before getting sick again and again.

“That can take a life. Someone can lose a child,” said Nguyen. “Maybe the parent of this kid don’t even know he do that. Don’t do that.”

Nguyen says on top of beer cans and bottles of hard liquor in his garbage cans, he found a poster of Zeta Epsilon Tao.

He says he then found a post on the Instagram page of the man who booked his house. It’s Nguyen’s living room. He says he believes the fraternity had a party and hazed new pledges in his garage. He reported the incident to Westminster Police.

“I don’t want to see any hazing activity,” said Nguyen.

Airbnb provided CBS2 the following statement Saturday:

“We have zero tolerance for this type of behavior and as soon as we were made aware of the incident, we permanently banned these individuals from our platform. Additionally, we are fully supporting our host under the Airbnb Host Guarantee program. To date, there have been over 300 million guest arrivals in Airbnb listings to date and negative incidents like this are incredibly rare. Our team is also reaching out to law enforcement to offer them our assistance with their investigation. The safety of our community is our priority.”